Tuesday, January 2, 2007

It's small, and the cover is downright weird, but this book features a dozen of the most imaginative sweaters I have ever seen. The designers mixed and matched lace, colorwork, ribbons, and cables to create dazzling designs for the, ah, adventurous knitter.

This sweater is a composite of fluffy lace stitches. The detail is hard to see in the small pix, but you can click the pix for a larger view. I can see it knit in a variety of mohair yarns--plain and subtle colorways.

I crave this sweater--it's colorful without being blatant and the ribbonwork detail on the sleeves is elegant and inspired. I've been toying with the idea of incorporating a bit of this into a pair of socks just to see how well it works in practice.

Even if you never make a single sweater from the directions, the unique ideas presented here can easily be incorporated into sweater designs written in English. but don't forget that all the designs inside are charted. However, only a single size is given, and I would be that all of them would be too small for the average Westerner.

The book is available from Amazon Japan, but I couldn't find it on Yes Asia. The ASIN number is 427711251X.